If you leave the magazine disconnect on your Browning Hi-Power, the magazine notoriously does not drop free of the gun when the slide locks back.
I was speaking with a buddy about it and he thinks it's deliberate so that the magazine wouldn't be lost since pistols were intended to be carried a lot and fired sparingly in European armies.
That got my juices flowing and I hit on another explanation for it being intentional.
Many European pistol designs use a heel release instead of a button. The magazine disconnect retaining the magazine after it was released would help with someone transitioning from a heel release to a side button and keep magazines from being dropped to the ground to be lost or damaged.
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That was always my understanding of why Heel-Release magazines lasted as long as they did. A similar vein on why so many bolt-action rifles had magazine cut-offs that forced soldier to load their rifles as single-shots, lest they "Spray and Pray" (amusing typing that in relation to manually-operated infantry rifles) away all their available ammo.
ReplyDeleteI must say, being a resident of Massachusetts where several of my magazines cannot be reasonably replaced as they are pre-94 "High Capacity", I certainly don't want to be bouncing these boxes off the ground when I'm training.
I care a lot less if I'm reloading to save my life of the lives of others...